The federal law requires Connecticut to spend some $112 million to expand its testing program and to help local districts carry out other federal requirements over the next three years, while Washington has appropriated only about $71 million, leaving the state with an unfinanced burden of $41 million, Connecticut’s commissioner of education said in a report last month.
Legal scholars said that previous lawsuits brought against the federal government over so-called unfunded mandates have had mixed success. But Connecticut’s suit could gain special traction because the No Child Left Behind law includes a passage, first sponsored by Republicans during the Clinton administration, that forbids federal officials from requiring states to spend their own funds to carry out the federal policies outlined in the law.
